Does a single party state lead to dictatorship?
October 19th, 2009 | 
Author: By Manisha Kumari, Managing Editor
Are the opposition given equal rights in single party state? If the answer is no, isn’t it an infringement of human rights? Is single party state a blotch in the name of democracy?
Not much difference can be stated between dictatorship and single state party.
Wikipedia defines dictatorship as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual or a government controlled by one person or a small group of people.
In single-party state, a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election.
Sometimes the term de facto single-party state is used to describe a dominant-party system where laws or practices prevent the opposition from legally getting power.
Many sociologists believe that a single party state is nothing but another name for dictatorship.
Single party state is just a way of legitimizing the dictatorship under that nation’s constitution, or to present a veneer of democracy to other democratic nations.
It is simply the dictatorship rule ‘by the will of the people’.
The True Whig Party of Liberia is considered the first monopoly or single-party state in the world.
The True Whig Party was Liberia’s only legal political party for over 100 years, from 1878 to the coup d’etat of 1980.
Under this regime, though freedom of speech was guaranteed by the constitution, restrictions were placed on the dissent and opposition candidates were subjected to official harassment. Political power was concentrated in a small number of prominent families.
Will PAP be another The True Whig Party of Liberia?
If we look at the Singapore’s history, Singaporean’s politics have been dominated by the People’s Action Party (PAP) since the 1959 general election when Lee Kuan Yew became Singapore’s first Prime Minister. The PAP has been in government ever since. There are other parties too like the Workers’ Party of Singapore and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) but only for namesake.
These parties claim that Singapore is a de facto one-party state. PAP has also being accused of employing censorship, gerrymandering and the filing of civil suits against the opposition for libel or slander to impede their success.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – world’s leading provider of country intelligence, classes Singapore as a ‘hybrid’ country, with authoritarian and democratic elements. Freedom House – an international NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights does not consider Singapore an ‘electoral democracy’ and ranks the country as ‘partly free’.
Singapore has one of the highest per capita GDP in the world. It also claims to be number one in education but what happens when it comes to personal freedom, it is party free.
The media in Singapore is a tightly controlled operation. Currently Singapore’s local print media is run by the Singapore Press Holdings and MediaCorp, two companies under the direct control of the state. People can in no way voice their opinion.
A single party system is heavily associated with dictatorship
A single party rule does not represent true democracy. By democracy we mean, by the people, of the people and for the people. The most important principle of the democracy is not met as the voters are not given the option of ‘by the people’. If there is only one state party rule, voters have no choice but to choose the one that exists. A single party represents a single choice for a voter, which is seen to be no choice at all.
One-party states or single party state have been criticized for their disrespect towards human rights too.
In most cases, one-party systems have a tendency to become rigid and unwilling to accept changes. As there is only one party, political power tends to be concentrated solely within the ruling party.
As a result, it is usually easy for the party in power to disregard previous laws or the constitution of the state, creating a dictatorship consisting of the party. Further contributing to the association of dictatorship and the single-party system is the fact that many dictatorships have adopted a single-party system.
Other dictators may preside over a system in which political parties are legal and many exist, but the political process is slanted unfairly in favour of the ruling party and political plurality is limited.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in others’. It is time for us to change our way of thinking.
About the Author:
Manisha is media professional with four years experience in copy writing, editing and reporting in IT, lifestyle, entertainment and current affairs. She holds a post-graduate diploma in mass communications and journalism and worked for two years as a Reporter for Realpolitik, an investigative, unbiased, modern and thought-provoking news magazine in India and 3 years as an editor for Century Publications.
Posted in Opinion
Lets amend our NMP act.
Instead of putting up candidates and giving one seat to the loser who garnered the most votes, we move to a one voter, 2 votes system. This is a system practised by Japan and Taiwan. Given our smaller size we just need one small set of non-constituent MPs. We got 9 currently.
Instead of the government just appointing them. The PAP will have to nominate them. 9 by the incumbent, 9 by the opposition alliance. When you vote, even for the walkover zones you will have to vote for these seats. You choose 1 out of the 9 provided. The top 9 candidates in the vote count gets voted in.
As campaigning is limited in Singapore, the non-constituent candidates can only canvas for votes by themselves. In the areas where there are walkovers they can hold rallies.
Of course, the other thing that needs to be done is the introduction of limitations on GRC seats. I really think that instead of eliminating them, they should only ever be allowed a maximum of 4 seats. The winners of neighboring GRCs can choose to pool their resources together for town council management (I live in Hong Kah mega GRC, I see no obvious benefits. The Town Council is efficient but it was already efficient before this… so where is the diff?)
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The question is not whether a single party leads to dictatorship, but if this party is controlled by a Familee, and power past on by way of Nepotism (in all aspect of the Government).
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“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” — Lord Anton
Enough said, don’t you think?
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imagine if the rainbow was just one colour instead of the seven,it wouldn’t have been that beautiful.
In life too,we need diversity to add colour to our lives and make it more interesting and meaningful.
How can anyone up there understands the one down there when he
doesn’t care?
ultimately… the choice is ours!
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Singapore did not become a one party government so please do not draw parallel with other countries. It was at your convenience to blame the PAP but the fact was that they had done so well and did not disappoint the people that they were re elected time and again.
Blame it on the people who voted them if you may but it was definitely not by design that they were the dominating party. Every election they did put up a fight. There were a time when the SDP was under Chaim See Tong which managed to get a few seats, a promising opposition party, the next thing you knew they split. The founder of SDP was no longer inside SDP. Blame it on the PAP and you had become stooge of your own making.
How lame was your analysis and the way it was put together to malign someone just by playing to the gallery. How about writing something with substance and stop being a low life for crying out loud.
Gear up the opposition to come on for a good fight. Retake the domination if you can which I seriously doubt and please refrain from being a sour grape.
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Be the change you want to see in others
gandhi’s life story is an inspiration to us. i hope our opposition parties will learn from this great man. i have read a biography written by his grandson and i am impressed by his determination, humility and resourcefulness.
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Confuscius said: A country Man who is old already andreluctant to step down is a “Thief to His Country.”…..Shame …..Shame Oldfarts.
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@cy
It’s good you mention Gandhi.I think he’s the the ultimate
political leader worthy of emulation by the indian politicians
themselves and others too.
Don’t know how true this is but a local Singh who admire Gandhi
went on a trip to India and wanted to know where Gandhi’s ancestral home was.The guide broght him to where Gandhi lived but villagers could not tell them which of the houses belonged
to Gandhi as he(Gandhi) had no RESIDENCE to call his own.
This is a man who was truly “for the people and by the people”.
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Just look at Singapore and you get your answer. The same answer as when you look at China.
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Commonsense, any boss who is afraid of criticism of those below him/her is BE DEFINITION INCOMPETENT. Otherwise the incumbent is not afraid of any challenge by those WHO ARE ALREADY IN HIS COMMAND AND CONTROL.
INCOMPETENT BOSS always attempts to conceal his/her incompetence by oppression of challenge. The more vocal, legitimate and rigorously the challenge, the MORE VILE, RUTHLESS AND DESTRUCTIVE is the oppression because the “enemy” or “enemies” must NOT be surviving to pose continuiing threat of exposing the boss overt incompetence.
Such is the corporate and political world. Let no fools be deceived.
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Single party but a lousy leader leads to economic decline.
Look at Mao.
Look at lhl.
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Silenceisgolden said “Blame it on the people who voted them if you may but it was definitely not by design that they were the dominating party”.
Not by design? You are obviously ignoring all the facts and blaming everything on the voters when it is obviously by design that the system ensures no one else could win fairly. Who designed GRCs? the people who voted did? Who redraw boundaries and make strong clusters of opposition supporters disappear? the people who voted did? Who bankrupted or jailed all the good men so that there are not enough contestants? the people who voted did? Who controlled all the main media? Who controll all the grassroots organisations? Who control all the supposedly non partisan institutions? Who designed such an unlevel field?
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//fpc
by your logic, single party, good leader leads to great economic (and social) growth. e.g. Deng Xiao Ping, Jiang Ze Ming.
i think the problem with a single dominant party is that it runs the risk of being dynastic. and as history has shown us, even though dynasties usually herald their respective golden ages, tend to stagnate, become decadent and consequently lead to great decline and upheaval.
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44 Good Years. Thank you PAP.
Chinks shd look around in the region and elsewhere. Open your eyes wider.
Only those with helicopter vision can see.
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down with the PAP!!!!
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@amy – Who design the GRC? The PAP. Quite a good design and multi facets.
Who bankrupted or jailed all the good men so that there are not enough contestants? I don’t know who are the good men or bad men, all I know is defeated men.
Who controlled all the main media? Respective people did. TR is by TR, ST is by ST.
Who control all the grassroots organizations? PA controls the grassroots and the PM controls the PA.
Who control all the supposedly non partisan institutions? No idea. Is there any non partisan institutions?
Who designed such an unleveled field? The PAP.
Now my turn to ask you one question.
Who gives the power to the PAP to do all these?
The answer is simple – the voters of Singapore.
So if you need to blame, just blame the voters.
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GRC system diluted the votes of the opposition voters. So PAP won by design. Nothing to do with the voters. SMCs like Hougang and Potong Pasir are still standing strong because they are not influenced by the GRC system.
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When I was in Woodlands at the last election, there are so many people that I know who are against many policies of the PAP, but because they know SDP won’t win the Sembawang GRCs, many chose to just vote for PAP believing that in case their votes although is suppose to be secret, will be used against them at a later stage. Some of them even voided their votes.
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//Morice Cheng
Look around the Singaporeans around you and compare with the FTs that arrive.
FT look better.
Even your govt suggested so by importing them on masse.
Malaysian govt might be cocked up but at least it didn’t poison its own people.
There was a sequence of suicide by adults in 2006-2007 where people killed themselves.
I never see that in other countries.
Even Taiwanese have more money than you during retirement in spite of Chen’s corruption.
So you know where you other retirement monies went because we had pap longer than 8 years.
Don’t be a moran.
PAP way of making a living is digusting.
HK did not have pap and it is more prosperous than Singapore.
Look their top and mid range earners almost all from HK.
What do we have in Singapore?
It is a country where ft live better than the locals.
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Notice LKY came down to nus to answer prescreen questions.
We can deduce that nobody overseas wants to listen to his crap.
So he came down and forced his crap on young students in NUS.
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@ric – Whatever design PAP has by introducing the GRC, is the opposition not allowed to contest in it? Has not the opposition come close to wining it? In fact the GRC is the best thing that has happened for the opposition. They can harness their best talent and concentrate on the weakest opponent’s GRC and when they win, there is not just one opposition MP but five or six. Wasn’t there other SMC, did the opposition won them all? If the opposition is weak, just admit that they are and move on. Take on the PAP like a man and don’t ask for handicap. Put forth the best candidates, offered the best policy. If you can why don’t you ask Mr. Low TK to take on a GRC and bring in more opposition MP.
How about the opposition offer this to take on a GRC. Donate 50% of their MP allowance to build their own grass root. Reduce conservancy fee. Don’t employ more than 10% of foreign workers or any foreign workers at all unless local doesn’t want to take up the job. Be 100% transparent in the management of town council funds and allow public scrutiny. If after given all that can be given, they are still not voted in by the people, then you got to concede that the voters are the one truly to be blamed.
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@Morice Cheng on Tue, 20th Oct 2009 11:56 pm Without enemy fire a shot, I saw your helicopter already crashed a long time ago, the burnt rubble is for all to see – right in front of your eyes. Just that you are blind and can’t see what that wreckage is made of.
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GRC is thugs democracy similar to arcane criminal law in medieval times in English Law court that were even practiced in Canada.
In those applicable days, a woman accused of criminal offence must physically fight against the strongest man available. If she wins, she is declared innocent. If She loses, which naturally virtually every case will end this way, she will be put to the sword. And if she choose not to fight, there is another option, pick her strongest man available for hire and get him to fight that physical fight. If he loses, she is then “found” guilty. ASK ANY CRIMINAL LAW IF THIS IS TRUE.
Do we need this kind of thuggery in democractic institution? In contemporary societies, do we men habitually (except some weak and insane men) punch up women?
If NOT, get rid of it. Where it exists, JUST VOTE IN OPPOSITION for the sole purpose and reason of getting rid of thugs democracy where those who metaphorically “fighting for justice and equality found in national pledge” is introducing medieval justice of forcing woman to fight against the strongest man of the land to be proven innocence instead of on the merit of the accusation proven or defeated of evidence.
GRC is the devil of evil law and practices of false democracy NOT found anywhere in the world – NOT even in communist China.
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………The old, the feeble and the infirm were condemned either to renounce their fairest claims and possessions (or) to sustain the dangers of an unequal conflict…….”
This is what GRC is based upon – gang up to present an unequal conflict EVEN PITTING WOMEN AGAINST MEN IF THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO HIRE THE TOUGHEST THUGS TO FIGHT FOR THEM which in medieval times is called trial by battle.
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/T/TrialbyBattle.aspx
Is this democracy in this cyberspace age? Or are we living in medieval times of “justice and equality”??
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Of course, there are other crude versions of “guilty” until proven innocence in medieval laws of justice
It is called trial by ordeal such that the accused is restrained of defence, drowned in water. If the accused is died after drowning, then he/she is pronounced INNOCENT but if he or she survived the drowning, he or she must be pronounced “GUILTY”
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/T/TrialbyOrdeal.aspx
SO THE SHORT STORY TO THE LONG DECEIT IN MEDIEVAL TIMES IS CALLED YOU ARE ALWAYS GUILTY ONCE YOU ARE ACCUSED.
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single party state lead to dictatorSHIT!
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Read this Book Review of Francis Seow’s book “BEYOND SUSPICION? The Singapore Judiciary” and judge yourself whether we live under a dictatorship or not. The reviewer is an Australian academic. Francis Seow was an ex-Solicitor General in Singapore. He later joined the Worker’s Party and exiled to the USA after he failed to get elected as an opposition MP.
=======================================================
Pacific Affairs
Fall 2008: Vol 81, Number 3
ProQuest Asian Business and Reference pg. 494
BEYOND SUSPICION? The Singapore Judiciary By Francis T. Seow
Review by Dr Michael D Barr
Flinders University, Australia
FRANCIS Seow’s third book is a savage and unmerciful critique of Singapore’s judicial system. He provides convincing evidence that the Singapore court system is basically the play-thing of former Prime Minister (currently Minister Mentor) Lee Kuan Yew, through which he toys with and destroys his enemies at his leisure; corrupting the Bench, the legal profession, the police and the profession of journalism on the way through. The case presented by Seow – which is overwhelming drawn from the intimate detail of a single legal battle – demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Singapore is at heart a corrupt dictatorship separated from Third World dictatorships primarily by its national income and the cleverness of the techniques by which it manipulates institutional power.
It is a damning indictment that could have been much more powerful if Seow had resisted the temptation to indulge in childish name calling and heavy-handed didacticism. These acts of self-indulgence dominate the first part of the book and are never far away in the rest. Their main impact, as far as I can see, is to give defenders of the Singapore system and of Lee Kuan Yew the excuse they need to dismiss the book as ‘just another anti-Singapore rant’. Seow’s arrogant style was probably perfected while he was part of the system he is now critiquing (having been Lee’s choice for the position of Solicitor-General in the 1980s), but if the reader can put these defects aside it will become clear that this is a deeply disturbing story of manipulative and duplicitous behaviour on the part of Lee Kuan Yew as he set out to use a quiescent judicial and legal fraternity to destroy an innocent man, along with his wife and his lawyer.
The man in question is Tang Liang Hong who had the temerity to question the procedure by which Lee Kuan Yew and other notables (including his son and the current prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong), were cleared of any suggestion of impropriety when they accepted million dollar discounts from a property developer. Much of the book is concerned with the political and public relations machinations by which Tang was caught up in Lee’s web of retaliation, but in this review it must be sufficient to relay just a few of the most salient facts to give the reader a sense of the book.
For instance, what are we to make of a legal system that gives a defendant a couple of hours (literally) to find a solicitor, a translator (since she could speak no English), and prepare and present a defence in court to a procedure about which she had literally no understanding? Or where a judge sits in judgement on a case where he himself is implicated as a recipient of one of the real estate discounts that started the whole procedure, and who had previously worked for the family law firm of the primary litigant (Lee Kuan Yew)? Or where a judge (not the same judge) can receive many sets of documents, each hundreds of pages thick and so badly copied and paginated as to substantially illegible and unreadable, and yet two and a half hours later bring down a legal judgement based on his considered legal interpretation of the implications of their contents? Or where a summons to chambers is issued by an appellant’s lawyers rather than by the court, but the court upholds it? Or where evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt the innocence of the defendant is not only refused admission in court, but all record of its existence is expunged from the record?
Seow has drawn primarily on court documents for his evidence, having been supplied with a complete set (included documents later expunged from the record) by Tang Liang Hong, who is now a de facto exile from Singapore. Fully the last third of the volume is occupied by transcriptions of some of the most damning court documents, including a fair sample of documents where Lee Kuan Yew and his allies condemn themselves by their own words. (Seow delights in using Lee’s own words to demonstrate his capriciousness and duplicity. At one point he was even able to cite Lee as his primary source to sustain his charge that Lee was the arch-manipulator of the proceedings. Seow tends to overplay his hand when using this technique, but Lee’s arrogance and peremptory choice of words do rather lend themselves to ridicule.)
This is a powerful book, but it could have been much more.
Dr Barr :
Lecturer in International Relations, School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University
School Director of Studies (B.A)
School Ethics Research Adviser
Deputy Chair, Faculty of Social Sciences Undergraduate Standing Committee.
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To Silenceisgolden:
While I certainly agree the voters has alot to be blamed, I wouldn’t just say simply “blame the voters”, to me it is more like “blame certain voters at certain times”. For even if 51% or more of singaporeans want to vote out pap they will not be able to do so I believe.
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Please read the article written by ex NCMP Steve Chia at NSP website on Dream of One Party State http://www.nsp.sg/articles.php?more=123
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